“Not to the extent my superiors would like. Which is why we came up with a plan.”
“Let me guess. You can’t tell me about the plan.”
“Actually, this one I can. A little. You’re a gift to me.”
She physically recoiled and he could hardly blame her.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve slowly become his right-hand man and as I learned about the girls he keeps locked up...I wanted to get close to one of you to figure out how I could get you out. How we could all work together to get you out. So I convinced him that a woman would be better payment than drugs or money. I mean, I get paid, too, bu—”
“Of course you do. I’m sure you get money and a horse and forty acres of land. The payment of a woman is simply pocket change, right?”
“Gabriella.”
She began to pace the tiny room, her irritation and anxiety so recognizable to him he started to feel the same build in his chest.
“This is insane,” she muttered. “This is so impossible. These things don’t happen! They don’t happen to people in my family. They don’t happen to people! This is movie craziness.”
“No. It’s your life,” Jaime returned firmly. He needed her to focus, to get past the panic. “There’s one of his compounds that has the most evidence on his whole operation, and it’s the only one that I don’t know where it’s located. So, as I work with him right now, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. If you’ve been watching, paying attention, listening...you might have the answer. But we have to pretend like...”
“Like I’m the gift to you. And you can do whatever you want with me,” she said flatly.
“Yes. But the key here is that it’s pretend. I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve done a lot of things that will stick with me for a very long time.” He stopped talking for a few seconds so he could regain his composure. He didn’t like to think back at some of the chances he’d had to take or some of the people he’d had to hurt. Though he hadn’t actively killed anyone, he had no doubt some of the things he’d been involved in had led to the death of someone else.
There were a lot of terrible things you could do to a person without killing them.
He had to get hold of himself, so he did. He forced himself to look at Gabriella. She was studying him carefully, as though she could see the turmoil on his face.
To survive, he had to believe this was a very special woman who could see things no one else could. Because if she could see these things and other people could, as well, they would probably both end up dead.
“I know it sounds crazy,” she said carefully, “but I know what it’s like. I’ve helped hide drugs that I’m sure have killed people. I’ve had to dig holes that I think were...so he could bury people. I’ve had to do terrible things, and sometimes I’m not even sure that I had to. Just that I did.”
“No.” He took a step toward her and though he knew he had to be careful so he didn’t startle her, he very slowly and gently reached out and took her hand in his. He gave it a slight squeeze.
“We’ve done what we had to do to survive. In my case, to bring this man to justice. We have to believe that. Above everything else.”
She looked down at their joined hands. He had no idea what she saw or what she felt. It had been so long since he’d been able to touch someone in a kind way, in a gentle way, it affected him a bit harder than he’d expected.
Her hand was warm and it felt capable. She squeezed his back as though she could give him some comfort. This woman who’d been abducted from her family for eight years.
When she raised her gaze to his, he felt an odd little jitter deep in his stomach. Something like fear but not exactly. Almost like recognizing something or someone, but that didn’t make sense, so he shook it away.
Gabby looked at her hand, encompassed by a much larger one. She wondered if the small scars across his knuckles were from his undercover work or if he’d got them before.
What would he have been like before his assumed identity?
And what on earth did that matter?
She forced her gaze back to him, his dark brown eyes somehow sure and comforting, when nothing in eight years had been comforting. It shouldn’t be potent. It was probably part of his training—looking in charge and compassionate.
She’d never been too fond of cops, though that may have been Ricky’s influence. Her first serious boyfriend. A poster child for trouble. Gabby had been convinced she could change him, that everyone saw him all wrong. Her parents had been adamant that she could not change what was wrong with that boy.
They’d barred him from their house. Insisted Gabby live at home through her coursework at the community college, and had been making noise about her not transferring to get her bachelors.
It had all seemed like the most unjust, unfair fate. They didn’t have enough money, they didn’t have any trust. The world had seemed cruel, and Ricky had been nice...to her.
She was twenty-eight now and that was the only relationship she’d ever had. A boy, really, and she’d only been a girl.
This man holding her hand was no boy, but she wasn’t sure what she was. Except a little off her rocker for having this line of thought.
She cleared her throat and pulled her hand away. “So. What is it you need from me?”
He was quiet for a moment, studying his hand, which he hadn’t dropped—it still hovered there in the air between them.
“My main goal is to find the last compound,” he finally said, bringing his hand down to his side. “It’s the one he’s the most secretive about. So much so, I’m not sure he takes any of his employees there.”
“I don’t know if I can help with that. I did have this theory...” She trailed off. “I wish I had something to write on,” she muttered. She searched her room for something...something to illustrate the picture in her head.
She opened one of her drawers and retrieved her brush, pins and ponytail holders, some of the few “extras” The Stallion afforded her. A giddy excitement jumbled through her and maybe she should calm it down.
But this was something. God, something to do. Something real. Something that wasn’t just pointless fighting but actually working toward a goal.
Freedom.
She settled herself at that word. It had come to mean something different in eight years. Or maybe it had come to mean nothing at all.
She shook those oddly uncomfortable thoughts away and looked around for a place to create her makeshift map. “I can’t explain it without props,” she said, setting a brush on the center of the floor.
“Let’s do it on the bed instead of the floor, so if anyone comes in we can...” He rubbed a hand over his unkempt if short beard. “Well, cover it up.”
Right. Because to The Stallion she was a gift. No, that was too generous. She was a thing to be traded for services. She shuddered at the thought but...the man kneeled at the bed. The man who hadn’t used her as payment but was using her as an informant.
The man whose name she didn’t know.
“What should I call you?” she asked suddenly. Because she was working with this man to free—no, not to free anything, but to bring down The Stallion—and she hadn’t a clue as to what to call him.
He glanced at her and she must be dreaming the panic she saw in his expression because it disappeared